The cool
thing about personal computing's early days was a sense of wonder, along with
rampant creativity. It seemed every week there was a new cool thing, and each
release of a major program carried the same anticipation as a new movie or CD.
Recent "innovations" are less compelling, as we settle into a
predictable pattern.

Recently,
however, two new utilities that make e-mail a little more interesting have
become available. The first, called NelsonOrganizer,
is a Microsoft Outlook add-on that provides all kinds of new ways to organize a
large number of messages. Instead of the standard folder structure, messages
can be sorted by date or correspondent.

This latter
feature is cool. Click on a name and see every message sent to or received from
a certain person. You can also designate a correspondent as "hot,"
giving you top level, immediate access to everything pertaining to this person
or project. Nelson's secret is that messages aren't necessarily exclusive to a
single folder, so it allows access from different directions.

Nelson's
biggest strength is its speed, and its search facility is far easier than what
Outlook has to offer. Outlook, inconveniently, makes it difficult to search
across different folders.

It's not
quite perfect. If your address book has entries like billclinton@whitehouse.gov
instead of Bill Clinton, Nelson will
list the name as gov, billclinton@whitehouse. Just a little
confusing. And because Nelson
needs Outlook to operate, you may spend time switching back and forth before
getting the hang of the program.

Outlook
doesn't have to be open for Nelson
to operate, but Nelson derives a lot
of its functions - such as when you check messages - from Outlook preferences.
The good news is that the two programs automatically synchronize to your
message file.

Nelson is a keeper for anyone who has too many messages and not
enough time. You will eventually get used to switching to and from Outlook
until the inevitable happens: Microsoft needs to license this technology and
combine the two programs. And while the next-generation Outlook is certainly
now in development, it's hard to imagine that its organizational abilities
could be better than this.

Another tool
that makes e-mail a little sweeter comes from a company called FireDrop. The
company provides free Zaplets, which allow you to impose certain aspects of
groupware into the e-mail environment. You can moderate discussions, trade
schedules, share contacts or conduct polls throughout your distribution list.
There is even a template for a game of 'create the story," for those who
are less work-inclined.

In any case,
a well-executed Zaplet can be more efficient - and more fun - than sending
messages back and forth.

NelsonOrganizer can be
downloaded from http://www.caelo.com . It
is free for 30 days and costs $30 for an unlock code. To create a Zaplet go to http://www.zaplet.com and follow
instructions. Zaplets are free to individuals.

Note: In the May 28 column I referred to Mel Brooks'
"History of the World, Part 1" where Moses "lost" 10
additional commandments. In fact, he dropped only five.

Charles
Bermant's advice on e-mail appears weekly. If you have questions or
suggestions, you can contact him by e-mail at ptech@seattletimes.com. Type
"Inbox" in the subject field.